Mesa 7I96 or 7I76E

Hey all, I am in need of some assistance picking out some hardware for my 3 axis conversion.

Controller card: I'll be using stepper motors (no encoders), a Huanyang VFD to control the motor using modbus, and will be devising some sort of quadrature encoder setup for threading. Will the 7I96 be sufficient since I do not need the analog spindle control or a plethora of inputs? The only inputs I see having a 3 home switches, but please correct me if I am wrong!

Power supply: For either of these cards, will 24V @ .7A be a sufficient power supply?

If you need anymore information just ask, I'm more than happy to provide it. Thanks ya'll!

7i96 should be fine. You can control the VFD with Modbus, there is a HAL component that works well with USB to Modbus converters.

I'm running a CNC router with steppers and a 7i76E, using the HY VFD and spindle. I use a 15A 24v power supply for "house" power and the X&Z axis motors, and a separate 36v 10A power supply for the other 2 NEMA 23 steppers in my configuration (dual screw Y-axis). I'm not sure what other elements are in your intended config, but 0.7A seems light, if that's what you intended.

I'm using more home/limit switches than you, and still have room to grow. I'm toying with the idea of a water flow sensor that will throw an audible and visible alert if there isn't coolant physically moving through my spindle; then after some time interval, e-stop the machine.-- just to make sure it doesn't go all China syndrome if the frightfully cheap-looking pump ever craps out.

I just finished configuring LinuxCNC to use the spindle via a USB rs485 dongle, and I'm thrilled with finally cracking that nut. Example configurations from here on this forum saved me weeks of blind exploration. After a year of building sporadically, I'm now but a meager few dozen hours from having a whirly-thing that makes chips. I'm happy with the combo of components so far!